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1 Maritime Interests of US, India and Japan Raja Menon Stability, Law and Order in the Indian Ocean During the last decade anxiety about terrorism and piracy has grown on the Indian Ocean s tanker highways. The world s central piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur states that there have been one and a half times more piracy incidents reported in the Indian Ocean region than in rest of the world combined. Of these incidents, Southeast Asia had three times the number of South or Northeast Asia. So, clearly the region around the Malacca Straits has a problem. Most of the incidents are based on pure criminal activity, although it is the experience of police forces that terrorists merely use the existing criminal gangs as carriers for their political purposes. In the 21 st century, states have shown extreme unwillingness to let any government authority near the scene of the crime to intervene at sea. Many governments are routinely criticized for permitting their criminals to be caught and tried by someone else. So although the Rome convention that adopted the Suppression of Unlawful Acts (SUA) protocol reacted vigorously to the Achille Lauro incident in 1985, Southeast Asian states, for instance, are not members of the convention. The SUA convention was further strengthened in 2005 by adding clauses that made it illegal to place WMD onboard vessels and platforms at sea. The fact of the matter is that there has not been any known apprehension of criminals under the provisions of the SUA protocol in 20 years. Many of the incidents of piracy occur within territorial waters, and so far no state has encouraged another to patrol or apprehend pirates in their territorial jurisdiction due to the domestic political damage it could cause. 48

2 Political activity to destabilize regimes in India s Northeast, in Myanmar, and now in Thailand, are centered on maritime activity in Southeast Asia. For instance, the territorial objectives of the Daulah Islamiah Raya would not have been taken seriously a few years ago, but Islamic activity having spread into southern Thailand shows how serious it is becoming. As pure Islamism grows in Indonesia, there have been considerable successes against the Jemaah Islamiyah fundamentalists by Indonesian police special forces. But criminal networks are paid by the political activists for arms, explosives, and to transport them to delivery points on the Bangladesh coast, in the Phillipines and in Indonesia. So the nexus between criminality and political violence is quite close, since it is possible to buy an AK-47 assault rifle for under US$50 in some areas of Cambodia, while the same weapon fetches US$800 in India s Northeast and somewhat less in Myanmar. Malaysian speakers at international conferences in India have often accepted that there are important transshipment points near Songhkla, in the Gulf of Thailand. The same carriers who take weapons northward come south again with drugs from the Golden Triangle. Terrorism, on the other hand is unlike piracy because it eventually has a very public face. It invariably also has transnational links. However, there has been a tendency for naval and coast guard authorities to consider only terrorist attacks that terminate in an event at sea as maritime terrorism. This is a big mistake, because these events are few and far between, compared with the daily killing that goes on, on land. Getting sea-going forces to help combat this greater threat terrorism on land is the principal question that we need to address. Terrorism is aimed at influencing the political class by the sheer weight of terrorist incidents on land. This pressure makes the politician pay scant regard to isolated incidents at sea, which are not connected to the 49

3 course of major events on land. In the Indian Ocean, maritime activity is well connected to events on land and nothing brings this home more than the near victory of the LTTE (often referred to as the Tamil Tigers) a few years ago against the Sri Lankan state. The LTTE ran its logistics almost entirely on the sea routes with a virtually unregistered shipping line. It is only in the last few years that Indian Oceanic surveillance combined with Sri Lankan cooperation in territorial waters has inflicted serious damage to the LTTE logistics chain, thereby crippling its leaders war ashore. So how serious is all this for national navies? Some of the smaller navies might like to get caught up in preventive roles, but for the medium power navies, prevention of criminality and piracy is normally a coast guard activity. Some meetings between navies and coast guards are tackling low intensity problems in the Indian Ocean. Some of the better ones, not so well publicized, include the MILAN meeting organized by the Indian navy in the Andaman Islands on a biennial basis, which is essentially a retreat that includes Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Singapore, and the Maldives. In 2008, India began another initiative called the Indian Ocean Naval Symposium (IONS), which was inaugurated in February 2008 with 26 navies participating in a two-day conference in Delhi, with each country represented by its naval chief. Regional coast guards have launched the ReCAAP in October in Singapore, in which South Asian and Southeast Asian coast guards have an information exchange system run from ReCAAP, which is headquartered in Singapore. These forums suggest that low-level problems are being extensively discussed. Sea Lines of Communications 50

4 In most discussions on the relevance of the Indian Ocean in world politics the safety of SLOCs is present. The reference is due to the fact that the energy lifelines of Japan, China and India flow east from the Persian Gulf through the Indian Ocean. China even taken the issue serious enough to discuss building a US$7 billion pipeline across Malaysia, so as to save just 400 miles of the journey through the Malacca Strait past Singapore and up the east coast of Malaysia a very small advantage coming at a high price. This is an example that although a threat to SLOCs affects all nations, richer ones sometimes decide to go it alone to protect their interests, leaving community interests to vague international fora. SLOCs, as maritime strategists know, are very difficult to interdict. It is clearly beyond the competence of non-state actors who can at most push insurance rates up. The classic SLOC interdiction platform the submarine is actually required in much larger numbers than is possessed by Indian Ocean navies (except India, who has no interest in interdicting SLOCs) to interdict a SLOC. So a commonality of interests of Indian Ocean and extra-regional navies could ensure non-interference in SLOCs, if the political will existed. However, national approaches to the safety of their cargo in the SLOCs of the Indian Ocean are indeed varied and not as cooperative as one might imagine, despite the vulnerability of their economies to the serious interruption of the SLOCs. Of all the commodities that are considered strategic and whose interruption could cause serious consequences, oil is the most important, followed by natural gas. The table below shows the vulnerability of the region s major economies to the interruption of oil flows. 51

5 SLOCs & Single Commodity Vulnerability OIL Year Country China Import % 55 Source of Main Import 39 % from Middle East Japan % from Middle East 8% from SE Asia India 81 75% from Middle East GAS China 2 Australia India 25 All from Middle East Japan 95 72% from Middle East 24% from Australia Nations attempt to address their single commodity vulnerability in different ways. Recognizing the difficulty of identification of individual merchant ships, many merchant marines choose to register ships with flags of convenience. The table below shows the percentage of ships of relevant countries that have been cloaked with anonymity due to flags of convenience. In many ways this table is an indicator of the extent to which nations have decided to bluff their way to defending the SLOCs. It is clear by looking at both tables that Japan for instance intends to pursue an independent strategy to protect its vital cargo by pretending that the vast majority of its ships are not theirs. India on the other hand has a statist approach, which proved to be a disaster during the Tanker War, being the country to suffer the largest number of hits on nationally flagged ships. 52

6 Safety of SLOCs & Flagging China India Japan Malaysia Saudi Arabia Taiwan Country Australia Hong Kong National % Foreign % Navies and Geopolitics Navies generally do not extend their activities to the geo-political level, and only India and Australia have a large reach in the Indian Ocean. The argument is that the amount of funding that goes into navies requires that they play a role consistent with the nation s political level. Anything below that could be a coast guard function. So what do the larger navies do? One role that IONS attempts to play is to assure smaller countries and navies that they need not fear the bigger ones and that policies regarding the ocean will be collaborative and cooperative. The other is that the unfettered play of power politics or changing a stable political atmosphere should be resisted. Nations have their areas of influence. Control of the coastal approaches of a state will always remain a political objective, in these days of force projection and littoral 53

7 warfare. Here again, smaller countries appreciate balancing by a benign power. This is a role that the Indian navy fills on a non-profit basis, with appropriate technology transfers to Sri Lanka, Mauritius and the Seychelles. Some collaboration also exists with Myanmar, whose naval chief was seen shaking hands assiduously at IONS However, to get back to the need for navies to address geo-politics-- one cannot help but hearken back to the pre-1914 situation when France and Imperial Russia decided on an alliance against the German-Austrian axis. Eventually the two alliances pushed all countries involved into the First World War. The causes of the War are not in question here, but what were the two governments Russia and France thinking when they agreed on a strategic alliance, without linking up by sea? After all, they only could have done so by sea through the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland, or through the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea. They had between them the helpful presence of the sole superpower of the time Great Britain and a navy on which the sun never set. In that instance, the lack of a maritime link-up was emphasized in an acute fashion when the war in Flanders bogged down in the trenches and the slaughter grew large. Along came a genuine strategist in the form of Winston Churchill, the first Lord of the Admiralty who boldly, correctly and inconveniently suggested that it was ridiculous to get slaughtered in the trenches without bringing the vast sea power of the allies into play. Here we have the brilliant attempt at Gallipoli to pierce the Southern Flank of the Austro-German alliance from the sea, knocking Turkey out of the war. The fact that sheer incompetence botched the landings in the Dardanelles shouldn t blind us to the possibilities of the best attempt to use and maintain strategy in a continental conflict. 54

8 India, US, Japan Maritime Link This all leads to geography of Japan and India, which are linked only by the ocean, with the benign presence of the U.S. navy. If there is any intention that Japan, the United States and India should pool their maritime strategies for common purposes, then they must look at influencing the geopolitics of the intervening region. It is not enough to look at small issues that originate on the seas that are, as explained so far, better addressed by coast guards and small navies. There are four areas that need to be addressed: Taiwan In the past, the unification of Taiwan with the Mainland was considered a possibility only under favorable circumstances, in which the people of Taiwan showed a willingness to unify with China without the use of force. Maritime thinkers had never shown more than normal anxiety 55

9 over the possibility of military action because it would be difficult for China to achieve sea control prior to a cross-strait operation. Now, however, two contingencies arise. The first is that Taiwan must build its defensive capabilities to prevent the issue being forced against the wishes of its people. The second is that maritime thinkers must plan for a situation in which China occupies Taiwan and extends its reach into the Pacific and the South China Sea. Vietnam For all the Chinese investment and joint oil explanatory agreements with Vietnam, Vietnam remains an independent power center of Southeast Asia, without the Islamic societal hurdles of Indonesia. With 97 percent literacy, a population of nearly 100 million people and excellent development indicators, Vietnam has a long history of rendering an unwilling sovereignty to the Middle Kingdom a sentiment that is alive and well. However, Vietnam has a historically poor understanding of maritime power. Its delegates often visit New Delhi seeking nothing more than the Soviet-origin spare parts that India supplies to Vietnam s fleet. Vietnam as a strong sea power is in the common interest of democracies as a future maritime balancer in the region, but it has a long way to go. Myanmar The geo-politics of Myanmar is a major question that is still very much open. The gas lines from Sittwe to Yunnan are under construction and Chinese is spoken in Northern Myanmar as far south of Mandalay. Yet, here is one case where the growing power of China can end up in a 56

10 classic case of imperial overstretch as its Indian Ocean interests in the Bay of Bengal become impossible to defend without either taking an accommodating attitude toward India or rearming to uneconomic levels of military readiness. China is a Pacific Ocean power and its energy interests may drive it into an uneconomic competition in the Indian Ocean, which it might be prudent to encourage. The levers of such a competition lie in the maritime arena. East African/Middle East As the biggest oil reserves in Africa are in Sudan and are increasingly important to China s economic growth, it appears that Iran, Iraq, the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the Sudan will merge into one area of oil imports for China. It seems inevitable that China s US$120 billion in oil deals with Iran, the Chinese presence in Sudan, and the huge petrochemical refinery being put together in Gwadar, Pakistan are all part of a coherent energy foreign policy. Militarily, this policy will be unsustainable without some base or bases in the region. At the same time, accusations of neo-colonialism must be avoided. This is gong to be a problem for Beijing, because it is here that the problems of imperial overstretch are going to be at their worst having to pass through the Indian Ocean, dominated as it is perceived by the Indian and U.S. navies. Politically this need not be so if Chinese foreign policy were accommodating to the United States, Japan and India. But if it was not, there are strong maritime levers that can be exploited in the region. Finally, in the way of a conclusion, a substantial presentation at IONS 2008 from the president of the United States Naval War College should be mentioned. He suggested that Indian Ocean navies should aspire to a base technology level, so that a common situational 57

11 awareness picture could be generated in the region, or Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) as it is called in the U.S. Navy. Much of the stability in the Indian Ocean region today rides on the back of the U.S.-produced National Technical Means of Verification (NTMs), which have been given to the Indian navy and were critical in identifying the getaway ship of the Maldivian coup plotters and the electronic intercepts of the Mumbai collaborators of the Kandahar hijacking. It is fortunate that the political objectives of India and the United States in the Indian Ocean are parallel, with a minor difference of opinion on Iran, and that this technology will enable the two countries to cooperate on common objectives. 58

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